


One Thousand Paper Cranes

by Valitiel



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Hurt and comfort, based off a true story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valitiel/pseuds/Valitiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tadashi too had a wish and he passed the legend on to Hiro</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Thousand Paper Cranes

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a children's tale called Sadako and the thousand paper cranes - a popular children's non fiction tale that was told to me as a child.

One Thousand Paper Cranes

BH6 fanfiction

One Thousand Paper Cranes

Hiro was too old to be believing in these sort of legends, after all he would be beginning his first year at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology in the fall. His windows were shut and the drapes were pulled again. If Aunt Cass saw she would surely scold him for making his room so dark – it would ruin his eyes and his mood. It was warm out and a lot of time had passed since he rebuilt Baymax. Now more so with the time that passed he was too old to believe in such old wives tales. He had to focus on reason, science the truth and the future. Cold, hard facts.

Senbazuru:

His mother had told Tadashi about the old legend, and in turn Tadashi had told Hiro. Hiro remembered that it had started with the lights in their home flickering on and off before finally cutting out completely. “Tadashi! The power’s out again!” Hiro hollered down the hall to where his brother was hopefully trying to flip the breaker back on. Hiro pushed himself away from the laptop and the rolling chair went halfway across the room with him on it.

“Ta-dashi! What’s taking so long—I thought you were a huge nerd!” Hiro whined as he made his way down the hard wood. Mochi stirred awake and scowled at the loud footsteps of the child.

Tadashi had his sweater sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a screwdriver clenched between his teeth. He turned to see his brother and huffed, scratching his head. He took the screwdriver from his mouth and shook his head. “I think this one is out of my hands.” Tadashi picked his brother up by the waist and carried him back into their room. “I’ll call the electrician. I’m sure the Café’s backup generator will last long enough until the end of the day.” Tadashi said out loud. He was sure the younger boy was listening, but wasn’t too concerned about the café’s electricity, but more that he wasn’t going to be able to play video games on the laptop.

“Hiro, why don’t you get some paper out and we’ll do something while we wait.” Tadashi suggested as he went to his side of the room for his cellphone. Tadashi began to dial the number as Hiro got the paper.

“Tadashi, I’m too old to colour with you when I’m bored now. I’m eight.” He sat down with the paper in the middle of the room. “Can’t we go outside or something?”

Tadashi seated himself near his brother and the stacks of paper. “Nope. We have to wait for the electrician to come and fix the power. Anyways you can go outside when it’s fixed.”

Hiro pouted. “I won’t want to then though.” He nudged the paper with his fingers, sending a few off the stack. “Anyways it’ll be dark by the time the repair man gets here.”

Tadashi moved even closer to Hiro and wrapped an arm around the smaller set of shoulders. “Maybe it will be dark, but it will just mean we need to get the lights working faster. Anyways I wanted to show you this for a while now.” Tadashi knew Hiro well. He loved learning and hated when someone knew something he didn’t. His teachers always had trouble conning the boy into doing his work, but Tadashi had no issues with bribing Hiro with harder problems and secrets that the boy treasured for whatever reason.

“What is it then you big dork? I hate to break it to you, but I’ve seen paper before.” Hiro looked at his brother incredulously as Tadashi used the pad of his fingers to separate a single sheet out from the rest. Hiro watched rapt with attention as his brother made the first crease.

“And…Done!” Tadashi held out his creation with his best ‘Ta-da’ expression.

Hiro didn’t look very impressed, but took it from his brother’s fingers with prudence. “You made… A bird.”

Tadashi pouted. “Hiro it’s not just a bird.” He began to fold another. “Mom taught me this when we were younger. I wasn’t very patient to meet my baby brother. I thought that it was sort of stupid that babies had to take nine months to mature, but now I understand it a bit more.” He folded the square into a smaller square and then into a kite shape which would eventually become the bird’s thin neck.

“There’s a legend from where Mom was from. These bird are called cranes. They represent a lot of things.” Tadashi handed Hiro a paper square and started folding a new crane, but slower for Hiro to watch and fold along. Hiro was rapt in the story, and his small pudgy fingers didn’t fold the paper exactly in halves, but Tadashi remembered his first crane – the neck was very bent, the wings were un-even and it didn’t look very bird like.

“Usually a paper crane was given to a new born baby to wish it a long and happy life.” Tadashi smiled at Hiro. “I wanted to do that, so Mom taught me how to fold them. However mom knew that one crane wasn’t going to keep me busy for nine months and told me an even older legend. It is called Senbazuru.”

Hiro bit his lower lip, trying to remember his Japanese. “One thousand cranes?” He struggled with the mountain fold for a while before his older brother guided him through the motions.

“Yeah you got it. One thousand cranes.” Tadashi finished another. Now there were three cranes, all white and crisp. Hiro’s was looking a little more wrinkled due to repetitive re-folding, but the legend never said that they had to be perfect cranes. “There was a little girl named Sadako Sasaki, who was very sick Hiro. She had something called ‘The Atom Bomb Disease’, but really it was leukemia. She lived very close to where the bombs were dropped in Hiroshima, and though she was only two years old at the time she lived.”

Hiro stopped folding for a moment. He knew what leukemia was, even at his age he knew that the result usually was not good. “She isn’t going to live is she?”

Tadashi shushed his brother. “You’ll see.”

“Is she going to live because of the legend?” Hiro asked with even more impatience.

“Tsk. How am I going to finish the story if you are going to tell it for me?” Tadashi began cutting strips of paper into various sizes of cranes.

Hiro picked his half-finished crane up and began folding again. “Fine. Well, go on then!”

Tadashi chuckled at his impatient brother. “Well she had a best friend, and she was named, Chizuko Hamamoto. She brought with her a gold piece of paper to her friend’s bed side. She heard the news that Sadako was only going to live for a year more. Thus Chizuko folded her the crane to wish her a long life and told her the same legend of Senbazuru. It promised that anyone who folded one thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish.” He shuffled the papers into a neat pile. Perhaps they had some coloured paper around the house somewhere.

“What did she wish for?” Hiro asked, finally finishing his crane with a very bent neck. Tadashi supposed Hiro’s crane was just in a resting position.

“She didn’t. She had a lot of spare time to fold cranes because she was in the hospital all day, but didn’t have enough paper. She would use everything to fold cranes trying to get one thousand. Her best friend brought her papers, she used medicine wrappers and even went to other rooms to ask other patients for wrapping paper from their presents.” Tadashi added Hiro’s crane to a row of five other cranes and began to fold another, passing another square to his brother. “She only made six hundred and forty four before she died.”

“She didn’t make it?” Hiro gasped. “Why are you telling me this stupid story anyways if she died?” Hiro huffed in frustration. There was no point to his brother’s story! The girl did not even get her wish and she made six hundred and forty four! He and Tadashi only had five.

“Well Hiro, her friends knew her wish and kept folding after her death. When her friends finished folding them they buried the cranes with her.” Tadashi put down the sixth crane.

Hiro was silent. “That’s dumb Tadashi. It’s a waste of paper. They can’t wish her back to life.” Hiro knew. He tried wishing people back to life and nothing would bring the dead back to life. “They didn’t complete her wish.” Hiro crumpled up his crane and threw it across the room to where Mochi was sleeping.

Tadashi simply handed the boy another piece of paper. “She didn’t wish to live otouto. She wanted peace.” Seven cranes now. Six of them from Tadashi one from Hiro.

“Oh. Do you think she got it?” Hiro stuck his tongue out in attempt to fold the crane’s thin neck. It came out significantly better than his first one.

“I don’t know what did you think?” Tadashi ruffled his brother’s hair. “We are definitely on our way to her wish coming true, but some wishes take longer than others.”

“Did your wish come true?” Hiro lined up his second crane next to Tadashi’s sixth. “You and Mom made one thousand right?”

Tadashi nodded. “Yeah. We did. My wish came true.”

Hiro, “You didn’t wish for a cat did you? Because that would have been a waste of a wish.”

Tadashi laughed, and leaned back on the palms of his hands. “No. I wished for a cool younger brother you big knuckle head!”

Hiro blushed. “Oh.”

“Yeah we made one thousand and strung them around the hospital bed while Mom was in labour with you for twelve hours. We were so excited to take you home that we forgot the string of cranes there, or we would have put them in your room.” Tadashi remembered the moment fondly. He couldn’t stop fidgeting in the car and trying to pry the blankets away from the baby carrier so he could see his new younger brother.

Hiro laughed. That sounded like something that would happen. He remembered forgetting his favourite sweater at the vet when they took Mochi to the vet to get mirco-chipped and made a Hamada.

“Well what are we going to wish for?” Tadashi asked. “I don’t think I can make another wish since mine already came true. Remember you can’t tell me until it comes true!”

Hiro thought. “Lemme think on it okay? I still have…” Hiro did the math “Nine hundred and ninety two more cranes until I have to choose right?”

“Right!”

He wished he folded faster. Back when he was naïve enough – young enough – to believe in such old wives tales. He had cut outs of newspaper scattered around the floor and paper balls everywhere.

“Six hundred sixty five. I wish O-Nii-chan weren’t dead.”

“Six hundred sixty six. I wish O-Nii-chan weren’t dead.”

“Six hundred sixty seven. I wish O-Nii-chan weren’t dead.”

He crumpled one that was imperfect and chucked it across the room, hitting Baymax.

Baymax had waddled over to Hiro and looked down at the boy who frantically folded cranes with shaky hands. He didn’t understand the motions was this a new symptom of Hiro’s anxiety. Perhaps school was becoming too much of a struggle for him.

“Six hundred sixty eight. I wish O-Nii-chan weren’t dead.”

“Six hundred sixty nine. I wish O-Nii-chan didn’t run into the fire.”

“Six hundred seventy. I wish O-Nii-chan didn’t run into the fire.”

“Six hundred seventy one. I wish I stopped O-Nii-chan from running into the fire.”

“Six hundred seventy two. I wish I stopped O-Nii-chan from running into the fire.”

“Six hundred seventy three. I wish… I WISH…” Hiro threw the crane in the pile angrily. “There’s no use! It’s never going to come true!” Hiro hated the cold facts, he hated science, and reason! All of those things told him that his brother was gone forever and not even a thousand cranes, or ten thousand or even a million cranes would bring his brother back!

There was a soft rapping on the door. “Hiro?”

Hiro looked up in surprise from his spot on the floor.

“I contacted your friend and family. You were in distress. Family and friends can provide comfort in times of need.” Baymax droned in a “matter of fact” tone. Hiro momentarily regretted Baymax’s silent operation function that he installed to help Baymax treat sleeping patients.

“Hiro we are here to help.” Honey stepped forward cautiously, like approaching a wounded animal.

The gang stepped in, careful not to step on any of the cranes on the hardwood.

They draped a string of paper cranes over the modest grave stone.

“I wish that I’ll help Tadashi help many people.”


End file.
